Protests in Hong Kong again take violent turn
Fear of ‘smart lampposts’ stirs clashes
HONG KONG — Hong Kong protesters threw bricks and gasoline bombs at police, who responded with tear gas, as chaotic scenes returned to the summer-long anti-government protests on Saturday for the first time in nearly two weeks.
Hundreds of black-clad protesters armed with bamboo poles and baseball bats fought with police officers wielding batons on a main road after a march against “smart lampposts” that was sparked by surveillance fears.
The chaotic scenes unfolded outside a police station and a shopping mall as officers in riot gear faced off with protesters who set up makeshift street barricades.
The clashes in the district of Kwun Tong, in eastern Kowloon, were a marked departure from the peaceful gatherings that had taken place over much of the past two weeks.
Police fired tear gas to disperse the crowd after repeated warnings “went
futile,” the government said in a statement. By early evening, most of the protesters had dispersed, though clashes flared in other neighborhoods.
Earlier in the day, some protesters used an electric saw to slice through the bottom of a smart lamppost, while others pulled ropes tied around it to send it toppling and cheered as it crashed to the ground.
The protest march started peacefully as supporters took to the streets to demand the removal of the lampposts over worries that they could contain high-tech cameras and facial recognition software used for surveillance by Chinese authorities.
“We don’t want to be monitored — we want human rights,” said Calvin Wong, a 24-year-old demonstrator. “Maybe people in the mainland accept this, but people in Hong Kong will not.”
The Hong Kong government, when introducing the lampposts, said they would be used to collect data on traffic, weather and air quality and would not be used for facial recognition or to collect personal information.
Francis Fong, a member of a committee advising the Hong Kong government on the project, said that the lampposts automatically pixelated faces and license plates in the still images they took.
Still, Fong said, “the biggest issue is the lack of trust between the government and Hong Kong people.”
The semiautonomous Chinese territory has said it plans to install about 400 of the smart lampposts in four urban districts, starting with 50 this summer in the Kwun Tong and Kowloon Bay districts that were the scene of Saturday’s protest march.
“Hong Kong people’s private information is already being extradited to China. We have to be very concerned,” organizer Ventus Lau said ahead of the procession.
Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam on Saturday appealed in a Facebook post for dialogue between her government and protesters.
“After more than two months of escalated protests, we are all tired. Can we just sit down and talk about it?” Lam said in her post Saturday afternoon. She added that “prolonged fighting is not the way out” of Hong Kong’s crisis and appealed to protesters to take seriously her proposal to to start a dialogue in the city.
In a statement, Hong Kong police said protesters had started fires and hurled bricks at officers, and that the use of force had been required to scatter the crowd.
“Some violent protesters maliciously damaged lampposts on Sheung Yuet Road, Kwun Tong and vandalized Government properties, neglecting other road users’ safety,” police said, adding that they deployed tear gas and “minimum force” to clear demonstrators tossing gasoline bombs and bricks.
Officers also fired tear gas in the Wong Tai Sin area Saturday evening. Police said the action was a response to protesters obstructing roads and aiming laser pointers at officers.
The protests began in June with calls to drop a now-suspended extradition bill that would have allowed Hong Kong residents to be sent to China to stand trial, then widened to include free elections for the city’s top leader and an independent inquiry into reports of police brutality.
Hong Kong’s government-owned subway system operator, MTR Corp., on Saturday shut down stations and suspended train service near the protest route, after attacks by Chinese state media outlets accusing it of helping protesters flee.
MTR said Friday that it may close stations near protests under high risk or emergency situations.
The subway operator said the move had been intended to ensure the safety of passengers and employees, but supporters of the protest movement called it a concession to pressure from Beijing.
The company has until now kept stations open and trains running even when there have been skirmishes between protesters and police.
Also Saturday, Chinese police said they released an employee at the British Consulate in Hong Kong as scheduled after 15 days of administrative detention.
Simon Cheng Man-kit was detained for violating mainland Chinese law and “confessed to his illegal acts,” the public security bureau in Luohu, Shenzhen, said on its Weibo microblog account, without providing further details.
The Chinese government has said that Cheng, who disappeared after traveling by train to mainland China for a business trip, was held for violating public order regulations in Shenzhen, in a case that further stoked tensions in Hong Kong, a former British colony.
The British government confirmed his release.
“We welcome the release of Simon Cheng and are delighted that he can be reunited with his family,” the Foreign and Commonwealth Office said in a statement, adding that Cheng and his family had requested privacy .Cheng, a Scottish government trade and investment officer, was a local employee without a diplomatic passport.